Mountain views from Marta
Namaste to all!
Well, it was certainly a relief to return to Kalimpong after Darjeeling.
I had not realized how exhausted I was until I finally got to ITTM and
collapsed on my bed! It was so nice to be outside of noisy town again,
surrounded by trees and chickens, with electricity and occasional
moments when the rain let up.
We hired a jeep to take us back because we wanted to stop at a gompa in
the town of Mangpoo on the way. The gompa is special because the
rinpoche who used to run it was a trained allopathic nurse. He had a
hospital in the basement of the gompa to admister to the monks, nuns,
and local villagers, and they combined several different forms of
medicine. You could get an injection in the morning and then be
shuffled up to the gompa itself for healing rituals, and then brought
down again for some herbal healing!
Unfortunately, the rinpoche died 2 years ago at the age of 42 from a
liver infection. So the hospital was closed and the gompa itself was
quite derelict. Running the place is really a one-person show. The
monks we met there were just kind of hanging around--usually they are
serving and being taught by the rinpoche. They didn't even know
Tibetan. Everything has just kind of halted until the rinpoche returns,
i.e. he gets reincarnated and undergoes training again. Even though
they currently have a short-list of possible reincarnations, since these
boys are all under 2 years old, the whole process will take 15-20 years!
So a whole generation of monks at the gompa just spend their time
hanging out (although to be honest, depending on the dedication of the
monks themselves, this can happen even if there is a rinpoche at a
monastery).
This has also been an exciting week because it is the Dalai Lama's 70th
birthday (July 6), and there are 3 days of celebrations at any places
with Tibetan communities. The biggest celebrations are in Dharamsala,
where H.H. (his holiness, an abbreviation I'll just use from now on)
actually lives. Here in Kalimpong, we went to festivities at the local
Tibetan school, Barbara and I wearing chupas/bakus, the traditional
Tibetan women's dress. We brought with us khataks, special scarves that
one presents to someone as an expression of honor and respect. There
was a special throne with an image of H.H. where people would present
khataks and other gifts and prostrate (I did not participate in this,
but it was interesting to see).
After a series of speeches by school officials and local politicians,
which were either in Tebetan or Nepali or really really boring English,
the cultural program began.
This was fantastic. It consisted of 5 hours of traditional song and
dance and theater in traditional costumes (yes, I took photos). It was
all prepared by the students and their teachers but was remarkably well
done. The costumes must have been horribly hot, consisting of colorful
thick fabric, fur, and masks more suited to the Tibetan mountains than
sunny Kalimpong. One girl in the 45 minute theater part was visibly
exhausted under her multicolored headdress. Most dances were only
accompanied by percussion instruments, drums and bells. The dancers
would do amazing weaving motions with their hands and feet. The
audience would cheer every time they started doing a round-house jumping
move. There were several dances where the teachers/women's association
members would stand in a line singing and waving multicolored khataks.
There was also one traditional Nepali dance and one Hindi dance, which
were so energetic and fun! And after each dance, each dancer was
presented with a khatak.
There was a really wonderful sense of community at the gathering. Most
people were sitting on mats on the ground and sharing tea and momos. I
started out sitting in some shaded chairs, but a Tibetan woman invited
me to sit with her and fed me with some milky tea, cookies, and breath
mints. I was the only one from our group to stay until the end of the
festivities, and walked to town with Lamu, who does data entry at ITTM,
and Shentrup (not the correct spelling of his name), a teacher of
Tibetan who was visiting from a town near Calcutta. Lamu invited us to
her house and I had my first experience with traditional Tibetan butter
tea, which was delicious.
The festivities continue today (Thursday) at the school, and tomorrow at
the local temple. I will hopefully attend the latter. THe whole
program is dedicated to the health and long-life of H.H. There are also
free medical clinics where Tibetan medicines are distributed at no cost,
again in his honor. I'm so glad that I am at ITTM because otherwise I
might not have had any idea of all this going on.
Speaking of ITTM, we have 3 new guests: Stefan, an Austrian
Anthropologist, and Marco and Heidi, biodynamic gardeners from Finland.
Last night was Dan's last night here, so we had a little party for
him. He and I, however, missed most of it because we were at O.B. Das's
house for dinner--he wanted to reciprocate our having him over, and this
was really the last night it could happen. And if we didn't go, he
would have been insulted. So we went.
The past two days have been absolutely gorgeous, which everyone here
attributes to H.H.'s rainmakers, who have performed rituals to stop the
monsoon rains. I have taken advantage of the weather to take photos of
ITTM and Kalimpong, so that my family will stop reminding me to show
them where I'm living! I cannot believe how little time I have left
here (2 1/2 weeks), with so much I still want to see and do!
Namaste,
marta
Well, it was certainly a relief to return to Kalimpong after Darjeeling.
I had not realized how exhausted I was until I finally got to ITTM and
collapsed on my bed! It was so nice to be outside of noisy town again,
surrounded by trees and chickens, with electricity and occasional
moments when the rain let up.
We hired a jeep to take us back because we wanted to stop at a gompa in
the town of Mangpoo on the way. The gompa is special because the
rinpoche who used to run it was a trained allopathic nurse. He had a
hospital in the basement of the gompa to admister to the monks, nuns,
and local villagers, and they combined several different forms of
medicine. You could get an injection in the morning and then be
shuffled up to the gompa itself for healing rituals, and then brought
down again for some herbal healing!
Unfortunately, the rinpoche died 2 years ago at the age of 42 from a
liver infection. So the hospital was closed and the gompa itself was
quite derelict. Running the place is really a one-person show. The
monks we met there were just kind of hanging around--usually they are
serving and being taught by the rinpoche. They didn't even know
Tibetan. Everything has just kind of halted until the rinpoche returns,
i.e. he gets reincarnated and undergoes training again. Even though
they currently have a short-list of possible reincarnations, since these
boys are all under 2 years old, the whole process will take 15-20 years!
So a whole generation of monks at the gompa just spend their time
hanging out (although to be honest, depending on the dedication of the
monks themselves, this can happen even if there is a rinpoche at a
monastery).
This has also been an exciting week because it is the Dalai Lama's 70th
birthday (July 6), and there are 3 days of celebrations at any places
with Tibetan communities. The biggest celebrations are in Dharamsala,
where H.H. (his holiness, an abbreviation I'll just use from now on)
actually lives. Here in Kalimpong, we went to festivities at the local
Tibetan school, Barbara and I wearing chupas/bakus, the traditional
Tibetan women's dress. We brought with us khataks, special scarves that
one presents to someone as an expression of honor and respect. There
was a special throne with an image of H.H. where people would present
khataks and other gifts and prostrate (I did not participate in this,
but it was interesting to see).
After a series of speeches by school officials and local politicians,
which were either in Tebetan or Nepali or really really boring English,
the cultural program began.
This was fantastic. It consisted of 5 hours of traditional song and
dance and theater in traditional costumes (yes, I took photos). It was
all prepared by the students and their teachers but was remarkably well
done. The costumes must have been horribly hot, consisting of colorful
thick fabric, fur, and masks more suited to the Tibetan mountains than
sunny Kalimpong. One girl in the 45 minute theater part was visibly
exhausted under her multicolored headdress. Most dances were only
accompanied by percussion instruments, drums and bells. The dancers
would do amazing weaving motions with their hands and feet. The
audience would cheer every time they started doing a round-house jumping
move. There were several dances where the teachers/women's association
members would stand in a line singing and waving multicolored khataks.
There was also one traditional Nepali dance and one Hindi dance, which
were so energetic and fun! And after each dance, each dancer was
presented with a khatak.
There was a really wonderful sense of community at the gathering. Most
people were sitting on mats on the ground and sharing tea and momos. I
started out sitting in some shaded chairs, but a Tibetan woman invited
me to sit with her and fed me with some milky tea, cookies, and breath
mints. I was the only one from our group to stay until the end of the
festivities, and walked to town with Lamu, who does data entry at ITTM,
and Shentrup (not the correct spelling of his name), a teacher of
Tibetan who was visiting from a town near Calcutta. Lamu invited us to
her house and I had my first experience with traditional Tibetan butter
tea, which was delicious.
The festivities continue today (Thursday) at the school, and tomorrow at
the local temple. I will hopefully attend the latter. THe whole
program is dedicated to the health and long-life of H.H. There are also
free medical clinics where Tibetan medicines are distributed at no cost,
again in his honor. I'm so glad that I am at ITTM because otherwise I
might not have had any idea of all this going on.
Speaking of ITTM, we have 3 new guests: Stefan, an Austrian
Anthropologist, and Marco and Heidi, biodynamic gardeners from Finland.
Last night was Dan's last night here, so we had a little party for
him. He and I, however, missed most of it because we were at O.B. Das's
house for dinner--he wanted to reciprocate our having him over, and this
was really the last night it could happen. And if we didn't go, he
would have been insulted. So we went.
The past two days have been absolutely gorgeous, which everyone here
attributes to H.H.'s rainmakers, who have performed rituals to stop the
monsoon rains. I have taken advantage of the weather to take photos of
ITTM and Kalimpong, so that my family will stop reminding me to show
them where I'm living! I cannot believe how little time I have left
here (2 1/2 weeks), with so much I still want to see and do!
Namaste,
marta
posted by Elena at 6:46 AM
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